- Larry Ray was accused of starting a sex cult at Sarah Lawrence College in a 2019 investigation by The Cut.
- Ray, the father of one of the students, was later convicted of sex trafficking and other crimes.
- He was sentenced to 60 years in prison, and his story is the basis for a new Lifetime movie.
In 2019, The Cut published a shocking investigation into a worrying pattern of behavior among Sarah Lawrence College students, and it all traced back to Larry Ray.
Ray, the father of one of the students in question, Talia Ray, was already an ex-convict at the time, having pleaded guilty to securities fraud in the early 2000s and received five years' probation.
According to an investigation by The Cut, Ray subsequently served six months in jail after refusing a court order to give up custody of his two children. The magazine reported that Ray was arrested again in 2006 for a domestic violence case with his then-girlfriend, both of which were probation violations, resulting in more jail time.
But shortly after his release in 2010, Ray moved into his daughter's college dorm, dominating her roommates' home lives and manipulating the teenagers, who later described themselves as “directionless” and “fragile” in conversations with The Cut.
Several of Talia's former roommates told The Cut, and friends and family have corroborated, that Ray mentally, physically and sexually abused them for years.
Their descriptions of Ray's methods fit the typical structure of a cult: a combination of sexual coercion, threats of violence, humiliation, and sleep deprivation, along with one-on-one “therapy sessions” in which Ray, with no medical training, would convince young people that they had, for example, schizophrenia or were victims of child abuse. Those who spoke to The Cut said Ray systematically severed their connection to reality and to loved ones.
Ray also coerced groups of kids into paying him for property damage and minor mistakes that he fabricated as intentional sabotage — roughly $1 million over several years, according to a federal indictment reviewed by Business Insider. A source who knew Ray from his youth told The Cut that he was highly paranoid and a “psychotic con man,” despite having close ties to law enforcement and having worked as a federal informant.
Ray's complicated story has captivated the nation and was the subject of last year's Hulu documentary series “Stolen Youth” and the new Lifetime movie “Devil on Campus,” which premieres Sunday. Here's where he is now.
Ray was arrested, convicted on all charges, and sentenced to 60 years in prison.
During her interview with The Cut, Talia remained in frequent contact with Ray, and two of her former roommates, both young women, lived with him in New Jersey.
Other victims either disappeared because they had deliberately escaped Ray's influence or because Ray's actions had created a downward spiral. One of Thalia's former roommates, Santos Rosario, had been seen at the homeless shelter at the time of the investigation.
After “The Stolen Children of Sarah Lawrence” was published in April 2019, a joint FBI and NYPD task force began investigating the allegations. Less than a year later, Ray was arrested.
Ray, whose real name is Lawrence Greco, was charged with sex trafficking, forced labor, conspiracy, extortion, tax evasion and exploitation.
Prosecutors said Ray exploited the group of students for his personal and financial gain, and that he also forced one of the students, Claudia Drury, into prostitution (Ray admitted to The Cut that she received money from Drury's prostitution as restitution).
“For the better part of the past decade, Ray tortured his victims both mentally and physically,” FBI agent William F. Sweeney Jr. told The New York Times at a press conference.
During the three-week trial, several of Ray's victims testified about his violence, blackmail and manipulation, as well as the lasting impacts of his actions, including suicide attempts, eating disorders and homelessness.
Ray was convicted on all 15 criminal counts by a federal jury in lower Manhattan.
In early 2023, Judge Louis Liman sentenced Ray, who was 63 at the time, to 60 years in prison.
“He tried to snatch all light from his victims' lives,” Liman said in court, according to New York Magazine. “It was sadism, pure and simple.”
Later that year, several cult survivors filed a lawsuit against Sarah Lawrence College, alleging that the college had failed to protect them.
“They let us down terribly,” Drury told The New York Times. “We had some vicious people living in our dorms and they did nothing.”
